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Monthly Archives: May 2013

It took me a year, but I finally -FINALLY- can deadlift over my bodyweight! Not only do I get to use the big girl plates, but I’m adding to them. That probably makes me happier than it should. I don’t have a lot of goals with my workouts. I actually can’t think of any goal that I have been striving for other than that. And I did it!!

This past Saturday, Oliver participated in a soccer tournament that was not part of his regular season. It started ridiculously early. Who in the world wants to start a soccer game at 8am?? Oh. The soccer people. Ugh. But, he had fun. Tied the first game, lost the second game and won the final game. Every player got a trophy since they technically weren’t supposed to be keeping score; it’s all for fun, you know. The day actually didn’t go so bad until…..Until….my beloved 4 year old. Oh, my dear, dear boy. I suppose in the end it’s my fault. Isn’t it always the mother’s fault in the end? He was wore out and way cranky so I held him and made him shut his eyes. After a few minutes I asked him if he needed to potty. He assured me the answer was no. Repeatedly. Once he realized I was serious about keeping his eyes shut and being still, he suddenly needed to potty. Naturally, I said no. Repeatedly. So, he peed on me. Right on my lap. The best part of that was his response. “I told you I needed to potty.” I was torn between beating him and praising him for his caustic tongue. Pretty sure I chose the smart route and kept my mouth shut. I ended up missing all but the last minute of the final game since I had to go home and change. Motherhood, so glamorous. That moment was a definite lose.

I haven’t been making many fun new recipes lately. There is a coffee cake that I’m wanting to try, maybe later this evening.

This one might be a bit picture heavy. I kept taking pictures with the intention of making a post about them and, well, obviously that didn’t happen.

So, here we go.

Mother’s Day was a good one. On Saturday, Oliver had his last regulation soccer game that was the longest.game.ever. Seriously. Even the kids were ready for it to be over. It was a tie game so they went into a 4 minute sudden death. Still tie. Shoot out. Still tie. Another 4 minute sudden death. Still tie. (By this time, Oliver kept looking over at me mouthing “I WANT TO BE DONE!”) Another shoot out and finally, an Arsenal made a goal and another Arsenal defended the last kick of the opposing team for the win. So, off to the championship we go!

There’s Oliver way out in the field “defending.” Aka, twirling, dancing, watching birds…but when that ball starts coming at him, he’s got the kick-it-downfield down pat!

After the game we decided it was a nice day for fishing. In a “lake”. With fish we can’t actually eat. You know, FUN! Alan got everything ready, even did a Walmart run for snacks and earthworms. Grabbed our neighbor (literally. Broke in, slapped the video game controller right out of his hand and yanked him out of the house. Or not.) and off we headed. Made it to the lake, picked our spot, cracked open some cans, pulled the poles out and….no worms. Oh well. They’re still sitting in their bucket waiting to be fish food.

This picture pretty much sums up Colin’s personality. When he does something, he goes all in. Click the picture and get a good look at his face.

Oliver was all about digging in the holes on the bank. He found a roly poly nest in this one and that was the best thing ever, for about 10 minutes.

This is probably one of my favorite pictures of Colin. He didn’t get a hook on his line, just a weight and a floating thing (that he obliterated against the rocks). After he got tired of casting, he sat down on the rock. I asked him if he was going to get anymore fish and he said “No, I’m just going to sit here and wait for the fish to get on.” The best part, the shoreline is just on the other side of where the picture cuts off.

For Mother’s Day proper, I did a whole lot of nothing and it was marvelous. Well, I did crochet a lot. And portions of my house got clean, that I didn’t have to clean. Those two things mean way more to me than flowers. Not that flowers are bad, but if I had my choice…

This is the current blanket I’m working on. Looks wise, it’s up there with my favorites. Execution wise, it’s a monster pain in the butt. It’s a good thing it’s pretty.

At some point I finally got around to making some paleo donuts. I’ve been making (and eating) regular donuts for the boys so I decided I was going to break down and actually use the pan for what I originally intended. I used this recipe. The author said the recipe made 6 perfect donuts. That didn’t happen for me. At all. The first 6 came out horribly wrong.

They were doughy and flat and fell apart. The upside is they still tasted awesome, so I ate them anyway. After adding in about a tablespoon extra of coconut flour and cooking for 5 extra minutes, the next 6 did come out perfectly.

Those got dunked in melted dark chocolate (no salt or coffee like the original recipe) and that made them taste that much better. So, I got 12 donuts out of the recipe. It was probably an error somewhere on my end, but they taste awesome and I’ll probably gear up to make them again when I can be sure that I won’t eat 8 in a sitting. Because I’ll probably eat all 12.

On Tuesday, Alan and I went for a bike ride for our cardio day. Again, it was a gorgeous day and I just didn’t want to get on the treadmill. We went all around our neighborhood and then ventured over into the north side. I’ve only ever been over there once, but I had remembered that there was a cemetery there. Yup, we got a cemetery right in the middle of our development. I’m convinced this is where our ghost kid comes from.

For my birthday, I got a lovely bottle of tequila. In case any single person hasn’t already learned this lesson (and in my case, repeatedly learned this lesson over the years, why do I ignore it??), tequila is the devil. The eeeeevil evil devil. But, it was so good.

Yesterday we got to go out with our friends, Bob & Heather, to the shooting range. We’ve been talking about guns for a while and going out to a range for almost as long. We finally nailed down a day to go and it was a lot of fun. I’ve been around and shot guns before, but it’s been well over 15 years. It was definitely evident as I was more nervous than I thought I’d be. After a while, I got “comfortable” with the pink gun (yes, Heather has a pink gun and it’s awesome).

One of the guns Bob had that I took one shot and immediately set it down. Alan didn’t seem bothered by it at all.

We started out with regular target sheets (watch out anyone walking away from me!!)…

….and then moved on to zombies. Kill shot!

mmmmm….braaaaainzzzz….

Here’s Heather getting her badass on.

I had a picture of Bob shooting “The Judge” but it seems to have gotten lost in the technology ether. Which makes me sad. So here’s me with it. For whatever reason, I kept leaning my stomach against the bench. That makes for some awesome pictures.

And because the universe didn’t think yesterday was awesome enough, today Alan officially got the offer for the job we’ve been waiting on. Yay employment!! He’s really excited about this position since it’s no longer in the management role. Hopefully, it will be more hands on like it was “advertised.” Another plus, it was originally supposed to be a contract to hire, but they’ve changed it to immediate hire. Yay insurance!! So much relief. The bills from the boys’ surgeries are piling up and it will be nice to get those off our plate. And to, you know, be able to feed them next month 🙂

I was so excited that my legs didn’t hurt after leg day yesterday….until I did uphill cardio today. Yup, it hurts.

Colin has good weeks and bad weeks at school. This week seems to be a bad week. And last week was soooo good. *sigh* Yesterday, we got a note in his folder about how bad his day was. Not only did he get two time-outs, but he also smooshed a cocoon that everyone was watching for emergence. The child has a knack for tattling on himself and he didn’t fail this time. He kept talking about a caterpillar and butterfly, but it was in broken phrases so we couldn’t quite get it until we read the folder. I tried to explain it to him in 4 yr old terms how it was wrong and sad, but I’m not sure that he quite got it. Either way, if I start finding dead animals in my yard, that child is going on meds*!!

Oliver has been having headaches and “eye aches” for a couple of months. Took him to the eye doctor today (sans insurance) and found out that his glasses are actually helping his eyesight, but he doesn’t need a new prescription so it’s not vision related. So, back to watching and trying to figure out what’s going on. Hoping it’s sinus/allergy related and we don’t need to go back to a doctor (sans insurance).

Dinner tonight was portobello pizzas again. This time, I needed to use the brussels sprouts that were on the verge of going bad. I had used a recipe before that was pretty damned good and thought that I’d use it again. The downside was I couldn’t get the balsamic vinegar open. Neither could Alan. If I couldn’t get the vinegar open, then naturally I didn’t need to use the chicken stock. One without the other would just be ridiculous. Plus, I was too lazy to cut onions. What ended up sounding good was frying up 4 strips of bacon. Once those were cooked through, take the strips out, but leave all the grease. Put in the sprouts (trimmed and halved) and fry up until crispy. Break up the 4 bacon strips to bacon bit size and throw in the pan and toss. At the very end, sprinkle garlic salt on to taste. It was pretty freaking awesome. I can’t say that was the first time I’d “made up” a recipe, but it’s one of the few times I’d done something on the fly that ended up tasting amazing.

I’m pretty sure I’m shooting guns tomorrow. Hopefully that works out and I don’t die.

Friday evening we went to our local Mexican joint (“the chips and dip store”) to eat an early dinner because we were all starving and I didn’t want to cook. After dinner, I ordered the brownie supreme thing because it was my birthday and everyone needs some form of chocolate brownies on their birthday. When it gets to the table there are two cherries on top that are quickly grabbed by the children to get shoved into tiny mouths. At my feigned insult at not getting a cherry, “Hey! Don’t I get one, it’s MY birthday!”, I get this response from Colin, “NOPE, that’s not ’til tomorrow!!” and then he quickly shoves it in his mouth and chews as fast as he can. I would love to say that is so Alan’s child, but alas, that’s definitely a trait from me. Not going to lie, it did make me a little proud.

The older I get, my birthdays seem to get less…important? No, that’s just silly. Less….I don’t know. There’s a word I’m looking for but I’m only half way through my second cup of coffee so my brain isn’t quite working yet. My birthday was low key and awesome. Probably helps that I started the day with alcohol. That always helps.

Alan made me pumpkin pancakes and they brought me breakfast in bed.

While I was waiting on breakfast, I got this in my email. So.funny!

Next stop was Oliver’s soccer game. They didn’t win and Oliver got a kicked ball to the chest, but Gramme was there to watch it and he had fun.

Mom took the kids from soccer so Alan and I got to go on a sushi date. We don’t get kid-less dates or sushi near enough.

After sushi, we got cake balls. I was sadly disappointed that the red velvet one didn’t taste anything like red velvet. Maybe it was because the cream cheese icing was missing. Maybe they just don’t know how to make red velvet cake. I got more bubbly wine, though, so in the scheme of things the cake ball wasn’t really that important.

For dinner, Phillip and Hillary came out with us to our local wing place. Don’t worry, I don’t have any more pictures of food. They gave me a sifter since I didn’t have one. Not quite sure how that’s worked, but I have one now and I’m probably way more excited to use it than I should be.

And now I’m boring myself with my uninteresting birthday day, but I had fun.

Oliver had Field Day at school on Friday. He was so excited for weeks leading up to it. I’m not sure it’s exactly what he expected, but he had fun doing it. Talk about very carefully controlled mass chaos.

Relay race where no team won, they just ran until the time was up.

Three legged race with his best friend from class. This was more like a three legged walk where the bigger kid dragged the smaller one.

Jump rope…sort of…although, we’re not really sure where he learned how to do it.